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Our analysis found that firearm injuries of children in Florida disproportionately hit families in a handful of ZIP codes, almost all of them in Jacksonville, Orlando, Miami, or Tampa Bay.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Just west of the St. Johns River, which divides this sprawling city racially and economically, 2-year-old A’mahri Robinson was murdered in his mother’s arms.
This story also ran on The Trace. It can be republished for free.
This story was also produced in collaboration with Action News Jax and WFTV.
Ladonna Johnson was rocking A’mahri to sleep in March when he was shot in the head with a gun she kept for protection.
A’mahri loved going outdoors and taking rides in his pull-along wagon. His mother called the toddler “sweet” and “affectionate.” When he was around, she said, “you just felt love.”
The child was close with Steven Dodson Jr., his mother’s boyfriend, who had reached for the gun during an argument. Dodson, 21, in June pleaded guilty to murder and aggravated child abuse and was sentenced to life in prison.
A’mahri died in one of Florida’s most violent places for children: Jacksonville. This city has three ZIP codes that rank among the 10 worst in the state for firearm injuries involving children.
Every year, hundreds of children are hospitalized in Florida with gunshot wounds, and overwhelmingly, they come from a tiny number of ZIP codes, an exclusive analysis of hospital data by KFF Health News and The Trace found.
Hospital billing data obtained from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration shows that from 2018 to 2024 more than 4,000 children 17 or younger were hospitalized for firearm injuries — a rate of about 1.5 a day.
The newsrooms gathered data that the state’s hospitals use to collect payments from insurance companies or the government. The information does not identify patients but includes details about where they lived and their age, race, and other demographics.
The number of children killed in Jacksonville has grown so large that a nonprofit, Families of Slain Children, built a “Wall of Compassion” memorial listing hundreds of people killed by gunfire in the city. Memorial organizers have stood up a second wall nearby that is filling with names.
The numbers reflect how Florida’s long history of racial discrimination and permissive gun laws undermine public health, said researchers, public officials, community activists, and grieving parents.
Jacksonville kids were shot most often in racially segregated neighborhoods — a legacy from the early 20th century of state-sanctioned discrimination in housing, banking, and investment. These areas today are plagued by pollution from defunct city-run trash incinerators, garbage-strewn lots, dilapidated housing, poverty, and other problems that local leaders have been promising to fix for more than 50 years.
